


Spellbound

by lahijadelmar



Category: Hocus Pocus (1993), Once Upon a Time (TV), Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Aromantic Emma, Canon Fuckery, Crossover, Multi, Witches lots of witches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-04-02 18:00:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4069390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lahijadelmar/pseuds/lahijadelmar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Storybrooke's witch problem is far from over after Zelena is stopped, her time portal opening something of a Pandora's Box for the rest of her kind. Katrina is resurrected with aid of her twin brother, Killian Jones, and sets her sights on making Storybrooke the center of her new coven (partially by raising the dead to do her bidding). Emma is going to need the help of a certain apocalypse-stopping duo before everything is said and done, particularly when three witch sisters return and join Katrina's ranks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spellbound

**Author's Note:**

> There's really so much to say in explanation for this piece that it's hard to pin-point where to begin. I suppose I'll start off with an abbreviated origin story: it involves me and my husband, alcohol, and what began with BS ideas of how to do a stupid TV show crossover story. This was originally going to be nothing less than a parody (and may still be before the end) but as I've written it, it's started to take on a poignant life of it's own. 
> 
> If you're interested in going on this insane journey with me, there are a few things you should be aware of: I am extremely critical of pretty much everything having to do with Once Upon a Time (a show I once legitimately enjoyed) so the versions of characters you're seeing here and the situations they get into are my effort to make them more palatable to me. If you are biasedly in favor of anything in OUAT, you may not enjoy seeing how things are handled here. In terms of pairings, this story will not positively feature (or not feature at all) anything that is not tagged in the pairing list (so if you're looking for something pro-Rumbelle, pro-CS, turn back now). I would say this is for anyone who can take the source material(s) with a grain of salt and enjoy seeing the characters maybe reinterpreted just a tad. 
> 
> I really...can't promise what will result from this fic, as it's still a developing work in progress...but I figured I might as well share the idea with the world and see what kind of feedback results.

“Killian, mind that she doesn’t hurt herself!”

Having heard the voice of her older brother, Katrina flailed out her arms towards him against the darkness, her laugh a perpetual bubble in her throat.

“Liam, you’re going to give us away!” Killian whispered sharply, though he must have been so focused on reprimanding that he didn’t see his twin sister manage to inch up by his side. She whipped around like a cyclone and seized his arm.

“Gotcha!” she shrieked, ripping off her blindfold and tackling her twin to the warm sand of the beach. Liam’s voice rang out nearby as expected, reminding them to be careful, there was no need to be so rough. Killian managed to throw her off with the leverage of his knee.

“Take a rest now, both of you,” the eldest insisted, standing over both of them as they dissolved into a fit of giggles. “You’ve been without any pause since breakfast. You’re liable to faint from shortness of breath.”

And then, as he usually did, Liam gravitated towards the pull of the waves. With his hands on his hips, he looked out over the expansive ocean as most men of Whitespell proudly surveyed their crops.

“There he goes again,” Katrina scoffed in her harmlessly playful way. “I daresay he can barely help himself!” She looked to Killian for shared amusement as they had in all things, but his face had fallen serious and focused on the same sight as their older brother.

“The sea calls to him,” Killian said, his voice sounding misty and faraway…before remembering himself and refocusing on a shell that happened to be laying just beside his elbow.

All three were silent for a moment, stuck in their own personal reveries of confusion and growing dread before Katrina wondered aloud, “…do you think he will leave someday?”

Killian shrugged. “There’s not much for him to do here. He wouldn’t make a good a farmer…nor a good assistant for that matter.”

Katrina said nothing to this right away, knowing, perhaps, that she couldn’t argue against the destined fate of any man in Whitespell- it was just the idea that any of them could be discontent that was unfamiliar to her.

“But…you,” she began, hopeful. “ _You_ will stay to be my assistant, surely. We’re twins, we belong together.”

He laughed and shook his head, his sardonic nature ever present in even the throes of grave discussion…but his concerned glances at his sister gave away his sensitivity.

“You can’t possibly want me for an assistant…I’d be no good. We all know you’re far too talented for anything I could match. One day you will be the most powerful sorceress Whitespell has ever known. It would be a shame to have your brothers dragging you down…”

Katrina’s face fell, as if she was finally realizing something awful that had been nagging in the back of her mind for a long time. Killian’s first instinct was to reach for her and offer comforting platitudes, but she was too quick.

“You will…leave me as well, then. Someday.”

He wanted to lie and say no. The two of them had never known anything they had to undertake without each other and the idea that the future would find them someday as separate entities was a prospect just as frightening for him…but unavoidable, as they both seemed to understand.  

Killian didn’t have time to do anything because Katrina was soon back on her feet, running down the beach in tears. Liam, oblivious to the entire conversation, gave his brother a look of disapproving surprise before setting off after her.

* * *

 

“Is there…anything specific you’re looking for?”

Belle remained standing in the threshold of the library door, toying anxiously with the keys between her fingers. When she received no response she added, “See, I _just_ got married and-“

Killian sighed in frustration and snapped a book closed in his hand. “Oh yes? Perhaps if you would avail yourself to help me instead of standing there like a conversation piece I could sooner find it.”

“Oh, _forgive me_ for not diving in,” Her voice dripped with irritated sarcasm as she reluctantly took off her white bridal peacoat and hat. “The last time you and I were alone in this building I almost didn’t come out. And what was your grand gesture of reparation? A very forced ‘I’m sorry’.”

Killian continued to ignore her as he searched through book after book, tossing every one of them to the wayside afterwards with no consideration for the fact that Belle would have to spend a good bit of her wedding night cleaning up his mess.

“I suppose it’s a good thing Archie accompanied me,” she said to no one in particular as she began to pick up the books he discarded and place them in the movable rack. “He’s right outside in case you’re planning a repeat of last time.”

Killian just sneered out a laugh at the idea that the _cricket_ could make him do anything. He could do whatever he wished, including squishing the bug as he had done before in the brig of his ship. Luckily for Belle and her pacifist insect bodyguard, his focus was set on one specific goal this evening that had nothing to do with either of them.

“Do you not have _anything_ on the Witches of Whitespell?” he sighed after a time, his search still fruitless. He missed the wide-eyed stare of disbelief Belle fixed him with from where she knelt on the ground.

“No, I mean-… _of course_ we do. It’s just…an odd subject to request information about.” She got up and began gathering books from various shelves, appearing to be intimately familiar with exactly where this literature resided, more so than would have been required for an average librarian. “Whitespell…the peaceful community of witches, just south of the Enchanted Forest, that vanished mysteriously into the sea. I’ve done plenty of research on them, but I can’t conclude for sure what happened. No one can, I suppose. My best guess is that they broke their pact and were punished, but…why would they willingly condemn themselves?”

Killian dove into the books the moment Belle brought her collection over to him, continuing to ignore her reflective monologue. None of this was news to him, after all. The only thing he could really focus on was the glowing warmth of the stone against his chest, the fact that it would diminish soon if he didn’t hurry.

Five books into her stack, he _finally_ found what he had been looking for.

“It seems my search has come to an end,” he informed, a tight smile indication enough of his impatience. He then slid the book of choice into his coat pocket. “I will most likely return this to you in time…if I remember.”

And with that, he was gone.

* * *

 

Liam had left on a ship earlier that afternoon. It was a curious thing, having lived so long thinking that the three of them would always be together. Even in the weeks leading up to his older brother’s departure for the Royal Navy of Misthaven, Killian almost didn’t believe it was really going to happen. At the last minute, perhaps, Liam would turn back around with a laugh and it would all be some practical joke like the kind they had played growing up.

_That_ had not come to pass. Instead, Liam had taken his satchel of belongings, disappeared into the ship that had come for him, and in a moment’s time, he and his twin sister were without their tall, stalwart protector. How were they to function without him? Who would possibly shield them from the dangers of the world now? Who would make sure they didn’t overexert themselves or dirtied their clothes or had enough to eat at supper?

With Katrina being taken aside more and more to focus on the studies of her power, Killian truly felt like their unbreakable triad had fractured. He blamed neither of his siblings, nor even himself. Perhaps the gods had envied their bond too fiercely and in their jealous bitterness, saw fit to split them apart by unavoidable circumstance. Or…perhaps there was a well-intentioned purpose to it at all, but in his grief he could only see the negative clearly.

“I know you will not stay either.”

At the sound of his sister’s voice, Killian turned from where he stood, looking over the cliff’s face at the lapping waves below. Katrina did not seem stricken with sadness as he did, but rather a placated, solemn acceptance.

“Whitespell is no place for you,” she continued. “It has taken me awhile to understand…as I thought any place we were together was the right.”

Despite himself, -and maybe in effort to cheer them both up- he smirked at her in that charming, knowing way he had adapted to get whatever he wanted from _whoever_ he wanted.

“Perhaps, then, Whitespell is no place for you either.”

“I know it is not,” she agreed, tightening her shawl against the chill of the autumn wind. “Yet…it would seem the time is nigh and unavoidable for us to part.”

Killian frowned and swallowed thickly, his guilt so palpable he knew she could feel it just as if it were her own. How could he leave her as their brother had done? It seemed a crime, no matter how much his heart yearned to see the ocean.

Katrina took his hand. “’Tis not your fault, Killian. It is the way things must be for now. But the tide has a way of restoring things, doesn’t it? Every river leads to the sea, all things wash-up on the sand in time. Go to the ocean if you must, if she bids you. Not even _she_ can keep us apart forever.”

She then reached in her side satchel and pulled out a smooth stone, one that Killian would have recognized anywhere. When she placed it in his hand and closed his fingers around it, he inhaled sharply.

“This is _yours_ ,” he insisted, making a futile attempt to push it back to her. “You searched forever to find a stone like this! All day, if my memory serves me. You’ve had it for, what-…? 10 years now? No, Katrina, I-“

“Hush,” she commanded. “This is no ordinary childhood keepsake. _You_ helped me find this. It is far more important to me for that reason than for the virtue of being smooth. It symbolizes your devotion. It is imbued with a charm of my own…but more than that, with the power of our love for each other. Wherever you are, whatever has become of me…this stone will restore us to one another. _That_ I promise.”

* * *

 

Killian had never been very good at magic. None of the men of Whitespell were, usually only getting as far as excelling in a handful of charms. As such, it was more than a little ambitious for him to be eying the resurrection spell the book provided with any kind of intention…but what choice did he have? His intuition told him –the one afforded by their bond as twins- that his sister was dead. No amount of simple wishing on the stone would bring her back.

Thank goodness, then, that he’d had the presence of mind to read up on this sort of thing when the opportunities presented itself. The stone was useless, but with power of the time portal infused within there was every potential he could reverse what had already befallen Katrina. He had been certain no such thing would ever happen, rare and impossible as time portals were to create. Then again, perhaps witches were good luck to each other after all, for how would he have ever been so fortuitous without foolish Zelena’s help? Granted, it had come at the price of having to enthusiastically assist the insufferable Charming Royals, but such had been his price of rent since deciding to stay in this town. Anything to convince them he was benign.

As he drew the circle and diagram in the dirt, he felt _just_ a twinge of guilt. It was expected, having grown up being indoctrinated with the fact that this sort of practice was _forbidden_. Whitespell witches were never, ever to dabble in the manipulation of time, nor the creation of portals, among other things. But what did it matter now? He was bound by no such thing and hadn’t been for a very long time.

With the diagram drawn, he reluctantly pulled the stone from his breast pocket and placed it in the center. It still glowed a dimming orange and the reminder that his window of opportunity was quickly closing spurred him into action. In a language he had not used for a very long time, he began to recite the chant as prescribed in the book.

* * *

 

_“I am sorry, Miss Jones, but you read the parchment correctly…your brothers have been lost at sea.”_

Katrina stared fixedly at the letter, the shock so great she seemed to hope there was some spell in her repertoire that could reverse the wording- and the reality of the situation as a result. Of course, nothing changed. What good was her extensive training if could not save the two people she loved most?

Tears burned in her eyes, her hands shook, and the words of Elder Tempest rang so true in her memory that she might as well have been reliving the moment.

_“Yes…there is a chance they still live, but…they have passed into another world, one we know nothing about. You may hope that they return to you…but I would advise that you **expect** they will not.”_

Her hands tightened on the thin paper, ripping small half-moons through the letter and into her skin before she tossed it to the side. A fire of rage was building steadily in her heart for her homeland and the coven of Witches that been advising her. She was only a means to an end, a soldier they were priming and preparing to fight for what _they_ deemed to be important. If she were to make an effort to find her siblings she would be straying from the very cause _they_ felt she needed value. 

_Accept that your brothers are dead_ , they seemed to say. _Let go of everything you hold dear so that you may be the sorceress we need._

No, was her answer. No, I **will not**.

Her brothers were alive, she was sure of it, and she would take any means necessary to restore them to her. No longer did she care for the sanctity of her homeland, for the people who had brainwashed her so long into believing they cared for her best interest. She tired of being a pawn, a cog in the wheel.

Shamelessly, she stole the book of _Forbidden Incantations_ from the vaults. Without any remorse, she conjured the portal that would lead to where her brothers had been taken. Knowing she was working against two impending forces that would sense before too long what she was doing, she acted in haste.

“I told you all,” said Elder Grimm as the Coven swept through the Whitespell forests, their black cloaks billowing out behind them. “I told you all! Her broken heart will be our demise! The prophecy foretold of this!”

Elder Tempest ignored this, as it was her duty first and foremost to protect the island. She could not abandon this assignment even in the wake of an assured prophecy, even as the low, dreaded vibrations resounded beneath their feet.

“ _Tiamat_ …” Elder Tempest whispered, before turning to her Coven Sisters. “Go, get who you can off the island. _Now_. We haven’t much time!”

Elder Tempest was forced to disregard the sounds of screams in the distance as she ran, trusting instead that her sisters would save who they could even if she had no hope at contradicting the foregone conclusion. 

Sure enough, by the time she got to Katrina the portal had been cast and was swirling like a whirlpool. Their fates were sealed.

“You have condemned us to death!” Elder Tempest shouted, pointing at the horizon where gigantic, serpentine tentacles rose and churned from the waves. “She has come to punish us!”

Katrina shook her head and assured, “I am not sorry. I do not have in me to be so.”

She then jumped into the portal. Elder Tempest, in a last ditch effort to deal some kind of retribution, pointed her wand and commanded that the portal lead her not to her brothers, but a world that was befitting her heinous, cold-blooded murder. The portal then evaporated, the only evidence of its existence remaining in the beast that drew closer and closer to them.

A single tear rolled down Elder Tempest’s cheek for all those she had tried to protect and thusly failed, for her doomed homeland that would be taken beneath the waves and forgotten.

* * *

 

Killian watched with bated breath as the stone began to glow brighter and brighter, nearly blinding him. A lighted figure began to take shape and grow where the stone once stood, this much he could see from his shielded the sight. The strong gust of wind that had picked up when he began reading the incantation now blew with an almost hurricane-like force and he had to grab hold of a tree for purchase while the figure continued to grow and shine.

Finally, the light dimmed and dissipated, the wind died down back to the former still humidity of the night air and Killian was compelled to look up at what he had done.

“…where the devil am I…?” a voice asked, one he had not expected to hear again in his lifetime. Herose to his feet and called to the figure, “…Katrina…?”

Sure as day, she turned to his voice and there stood, against all impossibility, the twin sister and soul mate he thought he had lost long ago. The two of them could only stare at one another for a moment in rapturous disbelief, in shock that they should find themselves here again. And when the sound of their shared, deep breathing became too loud, they rushed to take each other in their arms.

“My darling brother…” she sighed against his shoulder. “I thought I would surely never see you again. I have been through so much peril since last we were together, so much that I would have shared with you…”

Katrina pulled back to place a hand on her brother’s cheek, seemingly to convince herself this was not a dream.

“You are much changed,” she observed. “You are still Killian…but not the boy who departed on a ship so very long ago.”

He petted her reddened hair, remembering when it was as raven black as his and Liam’s. He gazed into her eyes, now burdened with a great sense of loss he did not remember seeing in them before: this was only confirmed by the tremendous pain he could feel coursing through them that was not his own.

“It seems we are _both_ changed” he agreed. “…and undoubtedly have much to share. We have forever now.”

They shared knowing grins, the sort they gave each other before undertaking some act of mischief, and in that moment an understanding passed between them of things to come.

* * *

 

Katrina clutched her shawl as she stared at the frightening scene from a safe distance. It was through only dumb luck that she more or less blended into the crowd.

“Because you have been accused and convicted of the crime of Witchcraft, you shall be burned at the stake until dead. May God have mercy on your soul.”

The woman’s blood-curdling shrieks and the audible clicking of the flames against the straw were more than Katrina could bear to watch. She turned away, sobbing into her hand as she wondered what horrible place this must have been. Surely this could not be where her brothers had been sent. Perhaps Elder Tempest had bewitched her portal. Perhaps this was to be her punishment for condemning those who would have condemned her.

“You mustn’t cry like that,” a woman whispered, leading her away from the crowd. “You mustn’t show remorse. They’ll think you are one of them.”

Blinded from reason by her own grief, Katrina rounded on the woman and spat, “I _am_ one of them. Your kind is burning a non-witch in effigy of _me_.”

The woman gasped. “Of course…I should have known.”

Katrina’s luck would hold out, as the woman later revealed herself to be a fellow witch behind the safety of closed doors. She was not quite of the same talent or potency, but as she introduced Katrina to her coven, the _Sisterhood of the Radiant Heart_ , the Whitespell witch realized that this _was_ a world of her kind after all. Their power bubbled just below a thin surface of prejudice: as such, there was potential to rise above, there was potential to make Sleepy Hollow, New York into something Whitespell could have only dreamed of being.

Her heart grew full of aspirations for power, so it was crucial that she keep her secret hidden behind a convincing façade. Upon seeing the lonely, wealthy farmer Baltaus Van Tassel, Katrina pretended to be a long lost cousin searching for family from overseas. Her hair had turned red upon entry into this new world as indication of the blood she had spilt for her own ends…but Baltaus could see in it only the fiery Van Tassel locks and was certain she was one of his own. He took her in as a daughter and so she took his name and his Quaker faith. She also became a nurse for the army, certain that the advent of war and her own masquerade as a woman of peace and healing would be enough to save her.

This was her life now, very much another soldier in the fight for the world’s future from a formidable evil…but this time, it was by her own choice.


End file.
